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Sure drives a mean pinball: DUI suspected in wrecks

Photos by DEAN HUMPHREY/The Daily Sentinel—A Grand Junction Police officer questions Wayne Leslie Crosby after the vehicle he was driving smashed a fence and raced another half a block before hitting two parked vehicles at Chipeta Avenue and 17th Street around 8:30 a.m. Saturday. Before the wrecks, Crosby was racing the engine of his vehicle so loud that residents went outside to see what was happening, they said. After the wrecks, they prevented him from fleeing before police arrived.

A Honda, left, crashed into a Volkswagen Beetle, center, and a Volvo station wagon, right, along Chipeta Avenue in Grand Junction on Saturday. The man driving the Honda was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, driving with a suspended license and attempting to leave the scene of an accident.

The Rizzo family cars — Stella is a Volvo station wagon; Clementine is an old-style Volkswagen Beetle — were two hapless victims when a Grand Junction man pin-balled into them with his Honda on Saturday morning.

Wayne Leslie Crosby, 33, was arrested Saturday morning on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, driving with a suspended license and attempting to leave the scene of an accident, said Sgt. Tony Clayton of the Grand Junction Police Department.

About 8:30, residents on and near the 1700 block of Chipeta Avenue said they heard an engine repeatedly revving.

“It sounded like a crotch rocket,” said Sonja Cook, who lives nearby with her husband, Steve. “And I wondered what someone was doing out on one of those when it was this cold.”

Neighbor Larry Rasmussen said he saw Crosby, whom he didn’t know, in a green Honda nearby, revving the engine and “acting like his vehicle wouldn’t go, like he couldn’t get it in gear.”

John Rizzo, who was making coffee at the time, said he saw the same thing, and then the car shot away.

“He must have circled around the block, because I looked out the kitchen window and it looked like a plume of steam (in the Cooks’ front yard),” Rizzo said.

Steve Cook said he’d been watching a movie in his bedroom when he heard the engine buzzing and buzzing, “and just when I was about to go outside is when he crashed into our fence,” he said. “His car looked stuck, so he had to rock it back and forth and then he just shot back and tore down Chipeta.”

That was when neighbors report seeing the Honda hit the Rizzo’s Volvo, breaking the front axle and dislodging the left front tire, then the Volkswagen, which got its rear left side bashed in. Both Rizzo and Rasmussen, as well as several other neighbors, said they raced outside and saw Crosby trying to get out of his car.

“He had his leg out of the car like he was trying to leave, so I told him he needed to stay there and then shut the door and kept my foot on it,” Rizzo said. Rasmussen and Cook said they helped keep him there until police arrived.

Crosby was booked into Mesa County Jail. He also had been named in an active arrest warrant.